My Quest to Find My Waist

I started writing this in response to a message sent to me by a new BuddySlimmer and decided to post it.

Well….I started getting serious last April.  At least I thought I was serious.  I started yoga and salsa dancing, but I was just doing the minimum ya know? I tried a diet, the last diet I’ll ever go on, and it was so restrictive that I gave up after like 3 weeks, and I stopped coming to the buddyslim site after about 2 months.  I lost and regained about 20 lbs between april and september.  By the end of the year I had kept off 9 lbs, and since the beginning of this year, I have lost 11.  So, I’ve lost a total of 20 lbs since April.  Not great numbers, but its t.he largest significant weight loss for me in about 4 years.  What works for me is working out.  (When I am in the zone, I work out anywhere from 5-7 days a week, but the zone is not an easy place to stay in, so I usually get in about 4-5 per week, unless I am sick or injured.) I eat smaller portions.  Try to make healthier food choices.  I’m not an organized person, so I can’t really say that I plan ahead much, but I try to keep healthy snacks at home and at work.  I try really really hard to stay away from fast food, but it doesn’t always work.  =( (Especially when I don’t take my own food to work with me.)  Eating also helps, eating at least 3 meals a day is a big struggle for me.  I am not really a morning person, and eating breakfast is just one more time consuming thing to do in the morning, but I have to make myself do it.  Now, I keep a box of special k at work, and get my students to bring me cartons of low fat milk from the cafeteria.  I can eat that stuff all day long.  I have finally figured out that losing weight is not about suffering its about changing my life for the better.  Some days I will do very well, others I will slip, but I refuse to beat myself up over it, and I refuse to define my relationship with food and eating on a “good/bad” basis.  None of that “I was good today,” stuff.  Being as overweight as I am, its hard sometimes to believe that I can do this.  I mean it took 10 months to lose 20 lbs.  On past diets I’ve lost 30 lbs in 6 weeks, but it ALWAYS came back.  I am not trying to say that I have the THE answer, but maybe this is the answer for ME.  When I started the salsa lessons, it was individual–just me and my instructor because I was too embarrassed to take group lessons.  But, I finally decided to bite the bullet and now I do two group lessons and one private lesson all on the same day.  Its an awesome workout, its fun and frustrating, I am learning something that I can take anywhere I go, and I am making new friends.  As large people, a lot of us are so afraid to take that first step, we have been laughed  at and rejected so many times–or at least we think we have.  I am still the biggest person in my salsa class, and sometimes I just want to pack it in, but I don’t and I won’t.  I don’t do this with friends or relatives, just me and a bunch of strangers.  Tall, skinny, old, chubby, we all just want to dance. I have learned  that change does not come easy.  There is no quick fix. Permanent change takes time. So, to any of you who are reading this, who may be struggling, here is my humble advice:  Just take it one day at a time, and remember that every day is a new opportunity to do something good for yourself.

Do u have to weigh yourself everyday?

Do u stare longingly at ur scale everytime u go to the bathroom?

Do u take off all of ur clothes when u weigh urself?

Do u have conversations with  urself about whether or not u should weigh urself or wait till ur weigh in day?

Do u ignore ur scale after u have cheated on her by giving in to temptation?

If you answered yes to 2 or more of these questions, then you my friend are a scale ho.  Welcome to the club.

I have been all hyped up for the last 2 days because I can see some changes in my body. I’ve been all up beat and positive–working out with minimal grumbling. Then this morning a co-worker asks me if I’m hiding something under my coat–meaning a baby bump.  She wasn’t trying to be cruel, but dang! I could just feel myself deflating emotionally.  I was carrying a bunch of stuff and I tend to lean back like a pregnant woman anyway, but I really haven’t gotten that comment in a long time and it totally took me by surprise.  She knows that I want to have a child, and she was hopeful, but it still just killed my mood, ya know?

So, I fell off the wagon this week.  Not in a major way…at least not so major as in times past, but for my weight loss goals, this was not a great week.  However, I still lost 2 lbs.  As great as that is though, I keep thinking “How much more could I have lost, if I had just exercised 3x, instead of none.  I realize that my metabolism must be revved up from the prior weeks of better eating and exercise, but still I could be closer to to 260 or even in the 250s.  That would be awesome.  I haven’t been below 250 in a long, long, long, long time.  I’ve gotten close, but never managed it.  So, I kind of feel like I didn’t deserve to lose those 2 lbs, like I cheated or something.

I know the reason that I fell off the wagon was stress.  My job was very stressful for the last 2 weeks, and this week, I crashed under the pressure.  I mean, the first day I stopped at the fast food place, I knew that I was comfort eating, but I didn’t talk myself out of it.  Then as the day of the audit got closer and closer, I kept eating and eating things that I didn’t really even want but that made me feel safe and comfortable.  The day after the audit, I woke up with a runny, stuffy nose, sinus pressure and headache, and I think that that too was stress related.  I took the day off, but I still didn’t stop eating.  I honestly didn’t stop comfort eating until this morning, after I weighed in.  The more weight I lose, the more weight I want to lose.  I think if I hadn’t lost those lbs, that I would have continued eating wrongly.  So, I thank God that I lost on borrowed time, but this week I am going to make up for it.  In spite of tomorrow’s Super Bowl Party, I am making it a point to hit my mini-goal by Saturday and lose 4lbs this week.  I owe it to myself to make up for the past week.